Zombie Mall - Updating Forward

12.16.2012

After 3 days of editing, re-reading, and tweaking I've managed to finish what's turned into 3 parts of the rules for Zombie Mall. Quick Start Rules (4 pages), Basic Rules (22 pages) of the details of how to play, and a Walkthru (38 pages) of graphics heavy play examples.

Now to play test this puppy some more.

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Zombie Mall - Updating Backwards

12.13.2012

While going through and making my Zombie Mall walkthrough example yesterday, something hit me as not being right. Losing combat wasn't working out like I thought it was supposed to - losing Health was happening too often. But I was acting out combat as I had written it.

As I slept on it, I decided I wrote it wrong. Today, in the back of my head, I was trying to figure out how to say it correctly. After the majority of the day (in the back of my head) I figured out how to say it.

Now I've got to pseudo-play through it a couple of times and see if it says what I think it says. Regardless, I've got to go back and re-make some screenshots. And tweak the quickstart rules. And the detailed rules.

I've also got to re-brand some tokens so when a player dies it doesn't get confused with when they lose combat and get bitten.

Lots of going backward today. I don't like it. It makes for, theoretically/hopefully, a better product, but it makes me feel like I'm spinning some wheels right now.

This is what happens when you step away for a couple of days and come back with fresh eyes. Stupid, stupid fresh eyes.

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Zombie Mall - Walkthru Re-type

12.12.2012

Today I get back to some Zombie Mall rules after taking a break for a few days. I had to take a little break - when I'm reading rules I get to a point where I don't know if I read what I mean since I know what it's supposed to mean. So far I have 2 sets of rules. The first is the Quick Play reference that everyone has played by thus far. It's been tweaked while playing, but it's only 4 pages so it wasn't impossible to tweak. It's a jam-packed 4 pages though. Next are the full rules, for which I have to come up with a cool name. Instead of going with my original plan of making the full rules and paring them down to what's needed for quick reference, I went 180° and just expanded my 4 pages of quick reference into 21 pages of detail. Those 21 pages have lots of pictures, so it shouldn't be hell to read. I also repeat a couple of (what I think are) important facts in different sections of the rules to make sure certain points come across, more for when someone is trying to look up a rule than for someone reading the rules straight through.

I still have 1 more thing to write. Re-write, actually. My plan was to make a walkthru - show a picture of how the map looks at each important phase through a couple of turns, and write up the details of what's going on. I would throw in some of the "gotch-ya's" that I keep sensing will show up. The first time I tried it, the whole thing was about 7 game turns spread over 30 pages, with 1 phase of a turn per page on average. Enough of the token graphics have changed that I need to re-make the graphics for the walkthru, but I think the rules have been tweaked enough that I may have to re-write what was happening through my made-up game.

The walkthru appendix in the pic above is just 2 pages. There's a pic of the map used in the walkthru, and then a chart with a description of each space. That's the first thing I'm going to re-do.

After this, the game will be ready to unleash on people without me explaining what's going on. In theory. Scary.

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Another Mom Moment

12.10.2012

There are times I miss Mom, lots of times, actually. This past weekend was one of those times just because of where I was.

I was at my local Hobby Lobby, not for anything specific but just dropped in because I was in the neighborhood and thought I would look around and see if they would happen to have anything that would fit some of my straggling Zombie Mall accessory needs (they did not). While walking around the store, I went by the fabric/sewing section and decided to check prices on cutting mats, as my big one that I inherited from Mom is about chopped up - not to people using cutting mats, they're for rotary scissors and not razor blades when cutting matte board.

By the cutting mats are drawers of sewing patterns. Flipping through the patterns was a gray (actually white) haired woman who made me think of my grandmother, if my grandmother had white hair. Sitting next to her was her husband, who would really rather be anywhere else. I had a silent chuckle remembering all of the times Mom dragged me to a fabric store. There goes the next hour! If I'm lucky. No amount of "I'm bored" sped her up. I could tell by looking at these two that no amount of "I'm bored" was going to rescue him.

Even when I left to continue the circuit around Hobby Lobby, I stopped for a bit to watch them some more. In the whole time I watched, which was a good 5 minutes between looking at cutting mats and the weird stalking I was currently involved, the white haired woman never looked up from those patterns. Simplicity must be some form of crack.

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Black Friday/Cyber Monday Loot

12.06.2012

Somewhere in the past couple of years board gaming has become my big hobby. I'm not sure what it exactly replaced, but it seems to be the thing I dwell on these days, especially in the past 6 months or so (trying to make my own game that other people will play undoubtedly has some effect on that). In my group(s) of people I game with, I've elected myself as the one to get the games and components needed. I'm the single guy with disposable income, and I like buying things, so I just do it and nobody argues. Once upon a time I would get games and never play them. I still do that, but I get games in hopes of one day playing them, having been bitten by the Out Of Print quandary in the past more times than I would like to admit. This past year we did a good job of tearing the shrinkwrap off some of those games. Six games as a matter of fact! I bought more than 6 new games to make up for it, but that's not important.

The games we play tend to be on the expensive side, normally $50 and up. I'm always on the lookout for a good sale, and I had a feeling the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend would be a good time to stretch my online game shopping skills. I was not proven wrong.

Thanks to various forum threads and posts, I ended up placing orders from 5 websites (and one of them got orders placed Friday and Monday). The average sale was for 10% off, and a couple of those sites were offering clearance specials that went up to 75% off. I went overboard. I know I did. I feel guilty. So, so guilty.

Yesterday I opened up the boxes now that everything has been delivered. I wanted to make sure there weren't any problems with my order since I had read on one of the aforementioned forum posts that someone else had received the wrong order from one of the sites I ordered from. As long as that sentence is, I got exactly everything I ordered.

It may be in poor taste to get myself these things - I could put them on a list and others might get them for me for Christmas. But these are the types of things I prefer people not get me as gifts. They're totally frivolous and for most people not worth the cost. Plus, since I was able to take advantage of some good deals, I was able to save money and get what I wanted. It's a Christmas present to myself.

So now I'm going to put everything up in a closet until Christmas, or at least my Christmas Vacation. There's a part of me that can't believe I'm grown up enough to do that.

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